Blog

Meet Mixed Reality's Messiah: Rony Abovtiz

When we talk of mixed reality in years to come, one name shall shine brighter than the others. That name is Rony Abovitz. He currently oversees the development of what will be the most advanced example of mixed reality the world has seen. His company is Magic Leap and he looks set to become the new Bill Gates/Steve Jobs. It really is that big a deal.

C- Round Funding For Mixed Reality

When you have people like Google and Alibaba contributing to C-round funding amounting to almost $1 billion, you start to see just how big a deal it is. This is considered the largest funding of it’s kind in history. So we have to start to accepting that mixed reality will soon come to shape every aspect of daily life. Be it entertainment, medical, education, the benefits will be endless. Games, medical programming and even school curriculums will all be changed; changed utterly.

Abovitz

Abovitz sits at that vanguard now. Selling his first company Mako in 2012 for $1.65 billion, he soon set about establishing Magic Leap with friend John Graham Macnamara. With a shared dream to experiment with immersive, alternate reality, they set about developing the tech. After must investment, interest and a wholly promising teaser video, we now have their ‘Photonic lightfield chip.’ So, NOT a lens, then.

Photonic Lightfield Chip.

The advantage of Magic Leap’s chip is that it’s semitransparent, which aids the more ‘real-world’ immersive mixed reality experience. Speaking to Wired, Abovitz described the chip as a “three dimensional wave… component that has very small structures in it, and they manage the flow of photons that ultimately create a digital lightfield signal.” Writing for Wired, Kevin Kelly says of Abovitz, he “is heavyset, bespectacled, and usually smiling. He is warm and casual, at ease with himself. But he vibrates. He hums with ideas. Overflowing. One idea unleashes two more. He whips his large head around as he speaks, sweeping up more ideas. It’s hard for him to throttle their escape, to slow down how fast they issue from his brain.” Rony seems like the kind of far-thinking innovator that will see such a successful move towards mixed reality in our everyday lives. Who else but a robot-making, graphic-novelist to herald the mixed reality headset into sitting rooms the world over?